I've been enjoying another hobby that I am able to combine with Geocaching and Photography. It's Rockhounding with my prospecter friends Leigh and Margo. Our adventures commenced Aug, 2020 while driving up the South Fork lemon Creek FSR. Margo was driving and I was watching the GPS endeavoring to find another unique site for a cache. The scenery was just so beautiful and so enjoyable that I had to share it with fellow 'mountain scenery enthusiasts'. The whole drive out to this valley is full of marvels of which I also marked so they would be found. As I find more, I will share those, also.
The townsite belonged to the Oro Gold Mining and Milling Co., incorporated on April 20, 1898, which owned the Golden Wedge mine. The local manager, G.A. Farini, knew little about mining but a lot about funambulism — nearly 40 years earlier, as the Great Farini, he walked over Niagara Falls on a tightrope. An avenue in the Oro townsite was named after him.
While Oro never grew very big, for a couple of years it did have a sawmill, stamp mill, mine office, and assay office.
The town’s demise was reported on Oct. 21, 1904: “As a result of the recent sale of delinquent lands … the Oro townsite as well as that owned by J. Lawrence, both on Lemon Creek, have reverted to the government.”
Oro, which means gold in Italian and Spanish, was a townsite at the junction of Lemon and Crusader Creeks in the Slocan Valley.
I am told that my cache is hidden where the Hotel/Bar once stood. Leave your vehicle at the parking coords and you will see an arrow made of fist sized rocks pointing the way in. The whole site is overgrown with bracken but the ground is fairly level throughout.